Today was our last day in Myanmar so we made sure to see as much as we could in the morning before we left for the airport in the early afternoon.
We got a quick breakfast before leaving on our horse drawn carriages to visit a local village. This village had a very different feel than the ones we had been to before - it had 96 houses for 200 people and all of them worked hard together to build a community. We were lucky enough to see the different types of animals they had, how they made their own oils, how they cut up the weeds for the cows, how they spun cotton fluffs into yard for the weaving, etc. We found out that most people here live on an income of only $150 USD per month - only slightly better are those who work on the lacquerware. It was quiet and peaceful, and each and every person had a big smile on their face. It was at that moment when it dawned on me just how absolutely beautiful the people here are. Our rickshaw drivers took us to our next stop as well - a temple called Tamayangi, which looked very similar to a pyramid. This is the most massive temple in all of Began and it took only two years to build from 1163-1165! It had an interesting story to go along with it as well. There once was a King who had several sons. The second eldest son wanted to take over the throne and become king, but he had to wait for his father's reign to end as well as his elder brother. He became obsessed with the thrown and killed his father and his eldest brother so he would become King. Afterwards, he felt horrible about what he had done, so in an effort to atone for his mistakes, he had forced labor build this gigantic temple. Two Buddhas sit at one entrance to the temple, which is the only one of its kind. The King had two of them built sitting next to each other to represent his brother and his father. The inside of the temple is completely solid with millions of bricks - two rumors came as to why. The first was that the structure was so large it needed the solid reinforcement, while the other is that many men died while building this temple, and the King ordered for the bodies to be thrown in and sealed up. We finished our horse cart rides as we pulled up to the hotel for our ridiculously long given time to clean up, get our luggage, and check out - an impressive whole 10 minutes. How some people took showers and still were on time still baffles me. We piled into a van and sped off to the Green Elephant Restaurant (different than the one before) for our lunch. After lunch, we arrived at the airport for our first flight of the day - and we said goodbye to our wonderful guide. Our first flight was from Bagan to Yangon, which we followed up closely with our flight from Yangon to Bangkok. We were picked up at the airport by another from our tour company who took us to pick up our luggage and then straight to our hotel. We finished out the night with a wonderful dinner (definitely mostly European/American foods this time around) before going to our rooms to finish the evil deed of repacking our suitcases and hoping they closed. Our wake up call is from 3:00 am in an effort to get us to the airport by 4:30 am .... Wish us all luck on getting some sleep before that happens!!! :)
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Howdy from Bagan! We had a quick breakfast in the hotel before going to a local market. People from here go to the market every day with baskets to collect the groceries and supplies they need. A major piece to this is that the average person cannot afford a fridge, so they cannot store perishables, such as meats, for any amount of time.
Next we took a bus to Gubyaukgyi Temple - this is a relic in the Old Bagan village of Myinkaba. Inside were beautiful pictures depicting Buddha's teachings. Like most temples and pagodas, huge sections inside had been vandalized, destroyed, and stolen. Interestingly here, a German man named Mr. Thomann took most of the pictures on the walls before carving his name out on the walls inside. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed, so instead I will tell you one of the Buddha's teaching stories. In one past life, Buddha came back as a monkey. He was the leader of a whole group of monkeys that lived in the jungle. One day the monkeys were traveling around and they were very thirsty; it was hard to find water. They finally saw a lake and moved quickly to it. Now, this lake had clean fresh water to drink, but it was guarded by a hungry ogre. As the monkeys came very close the water the Ogre came out and said to the monkeys, "By my rules, anyone can drink from the waters from my lake. But by my rules, anyone who goes into my lake to drink the water shall be eaten as my meal!" Now the monkeys were terribly thirsty and desperately wanted to have a drink from the water. But then Buddha said, "NO! Do not go into the lake to drink the water." Then the monkeys worked as a team and crafted a long straw - and in this way, the monkeys were able to drink from the water of the lake without going into it and were safe. Next, we moved to the Shwe Zigon. The Myanmar people love gold, so when there is a "Shwe" in front of a temple's or pagoda's name it adds the prefix of "gold". Fun Fact: The names of the temples/pagodas are based off of the names of the donors. Here we were able to see the House of 37 Nat. Nat are the group of people who believed in spiritualism, where they prayed and gave alms to gold spirit statues. What is different about this is they believed that the spirits of their loved ones could take their offerings and give them help in their CURRENT life, not their FUTURE life. We had a lunch at the Sunset Garden Restaurant, where we were able to dine and watch the river at the same time. Afterwards we dropped by the hotel and took an hour and half to rest. We often take this rest in the afternoon because it is by far the hottest part of the day. We picked up our travels in the afternoon with a visit to a Lacquerware shop. Here we were able to see the entire process of creating the famous Myanmar Lacquerware. Next, we stopped at our last site of the day where we were able to go inside and view two different areas with Buddhas. In the first, it was designed by a very unhappy king. He created a large Buddha with a large chest in a tiny room. This was made to symbolize his experiences in prison, and to show the feeling of suffocation. The second area had another Buddha that he also had built - this time it was a dead Buddha, meaning a Buddha that is represented as having reached Nirvana. The message of this Buddha was that the Buddha was smiling because he was happier dead than alive in this world. We finished out our day with a lovely sunset boat ride on the Ayeyawady River before heading to dinner at the Queens House Restaurant. It was a perfect end to a wonderful day. Tomorrow will be our last day in Myanmar as we travel back to Bangkok for a short time before flying home! This morning we had a leisurely breakfast before beginning our journey into the countryside again. Due to traffic, we were only able to go to one place before our flight – the area of the mythical White Elephants. White elephants are considered to be a sacred animal because they relate to Buddha. Tales say that when Buddha’s mother was pregnant with him, she had a dream that a little white elephant was entering her womb. Buddhists took this as a sign that not only were white elephants prosperous, but that Buddha was most likely at one time a white elephant in his past lives. There are about 8,000 elephants on the border between India and Myanmar, and this is the location most of the elephants come from. While the white elephants seemed not terribly white, it was quite the juxtaposition when they stood on the platform near the “regular” elephant. Donations went to feeding and taking care of the elephants.
We then got through traffic and were able to get to the airport on time, only to find that our flight had been delayed. There definitely was a visible difference between the Yangon airport and others we had been to so far – there were far less tourists and the one shop in our part of the terminal was a small local market stall. Our flight was about an hour and 15 minutes and we landed in Bagan. We got our luggage and drove immediately to the Ananda temple area. Legend has it that in ancient times a Buddhist monk one day arrived to this area, which was a sight no one had seen before. The King decided to meet him and ask him questions about his religion and beliefs. After the monk explained, the king was SO impressed that he decided to become a Buddhist himself. Once he was Buddhist, he forced everyone in his land to convert to Buddhism. (Fun Fact: After this king died, his successor implemented a freedom of religion). This area had over 4,446 different types of temples which could be seen for miles around, although about half were destroyed in an earthquake. We had a nice drive then to the Green Elephant Restaurant where we sat by the edge of the river while eating a variety of local cuisines. Afterwards, we dropped by the hotel for 30 minutes to freshen up before our afternoon sites. We began again by visiting Old Bagan temple landmarks, beginning with the famous Ananda Temple. It is considered one of the best architectures in the area. This temple represents the endless wisdom of Buddha and housed 4 entrances - one at each cardinal location. As we walked around, we saw that each of the four Buddhas (one per entrance) each had different hand positions which represented different teachings. (Fun Fact: There is controversy surrounding the dot on the forehead of the Buddha statues. Some argue that Buddha actually had a mole with a long hair coming out of it on his forehead!) Lastly, we finished up at Shew San Daw Pagoda where we climbed impossibly narrow and steep steps to view the sun setting over the temples. It was absolutely beautiful, stunning, and overwhelming at the same time. We ended the night by driving back to our hotel for dinner and a dance show which was the perfect end to a lovely day. Only a few more days for us to enjoy here, but know we are all thinking about our loved ones! Talk about exhausted! We had an incredibly early flight - just to give you an idea our wake up call was at 3:00am. Some of us slept a little, some not at all, but the collective group was very sleepy when we headed for the Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok for our flight to Yangon, Myanmar. The flight was about 1 hr and 30 minutes and we arrived safe and sound at the Yangon International Airport to meet our guides S and J.
Our first stop was at the City Center - here we were able to see many important areas, including religious establishments, the main park, and governmental buildings. It was a quick stop and again we were able to see the children who were begging specifically to tourists. (Fun Fact: people rub the bark off of a local tree which create a powder, which in turn is mixed with water and rubbed onto the faces of women and small children. This paste was used to keep the skin light as well as to moisturize and keep the face soft and smooth.) Next, we visited the Botataung Pagoda. It was special because it was a Pagoda that was hollow inside, so we were able to walk through and see the relics. It is important to note that this is where Buddha's hair is preserved, so many people came to give money and flowers in an offering to help make their wishes come true. We also were fortunate enough to see the gigantic reclining Buddha Chaukhtatgyi. It was interesting to learn about the different "looks" of Buddha, especially since this one is seemingly more feminine looking. We were told that there are 32 characteristics of Buddha (e.g., long earlobes) that artists base their Buddha off of. Because some have never seen Buddha, there is a high chance that each Buddha might look a little different based on the artist's impressions. On the soles on the Buddha's feet there are marks - 108 in total. These marks are all separated into three different representations of worlds - inanimate, animate, and conditioned. The essence is that the Buddha is greater than all three of these worlds. We stopped at the Western Park Restaurant, where we were shuffled into a back room since there was a huge wedding going on in the main part of the restaurant. The food was all chosen for us, and included a variety such as egg pudding, corn soup, duck wraps, sweet and sour chicken, squid, etc. After lunch we checked into our hotel and had 25 minutes to ourselves, which ultimately resulted in a very short nap (Fun Fact: Through research, NASA has issued that the most ideal nap time to increase productivity is 26 minutes!). From there we went to a local market - it was definitely a different take on seeing a country in its raw form. It was mainly wholesale fruits and veggies. From there we visited the astounding Shwedagon Pagoda. This pagoda is claimed to be one of the most beautiful pagodas in all of Asia, and I wouldn't disagree. It was actually overwhelming walking through because of the sheer number of Buddhas, gold, people, etc. Due to intense traffic, we arrived a little late to our dinner at Karaweik Palace Restaurant. Here we were able to go through a buffet with traditional and non-traditional foods and watch a Myanmar Cultural Show. Afterwards it was a drive back to the hotel for an early sleep! Today we had a quick day with a flight in the afternoon. We began by driving in our trusty can to Preah Khan. Preah Khan was a masterpiece created by Khmer King Jayavarman IV, and the name translates into the Sacred Sword Temple. It was here that oral history places it as the location where the king used to install his royal sword, royal dress, and royal crown, which is all needed for the king to officially come into the thrown. This was the last site we visited at Angkor Archeological site.
In the afternoon we took a flight back to Bangkok, where we rearranged our suitcases, had free time to go around the town, and a dinner at the hotel. It is going to be an absurdly early morning tomorrow, so hopefully we can all catch some good sleep before our wake up call! Today we got up at the bright and early time of 6:30 am so we could depart for our activities by 7:30 am. Fun Fact: Cambodian people think that 9 is a lucky number, while 8 is a bad number (because when it is turned sideways it looks like handcuffs). Rat reminded us that when we get up earlier, we can get to the sites when it is cooler and have less people. Our first stop was Banteay Srei, which is a beautifully preserved temple. Translated, Banteay Srei means the Citadel of Women. The entire area was tiny and all of the sculptures and carvings were at our eye level. It is amazing to see how much has been preserved since it was built in 967 AD.
We stopped by the hotel to grab some lunch and rest before heading out to Angkor Thom. When Rat first said the name, it sounded remarkably similar to "Uncle Tom" - which is quite funny to those literary buffs out there. Andkor Thom was the capital city of the Khmer King. Close by we were also able to see Ta-Prom Temple. Ta-Prom was not discovered until the mid 1800's when the ruins were found by French persons exploring the jungle. Unlike many of the other temples, this was left completely covered with trees due to the fact that the trees began growing in and around the stones, making it impossible to remove them without completely destroying what is left. After we drove back into Siem Reap and to the hotel, we were given free time. I cannot speak for everyone, but a few of us were able to take a TukTuk (local transportation, motor bikes with carriages attached to the back) into the main area of the city to have an authentic Cambodian dinner and walk around the night market. The dinner food was recommended to us by Rat so we had two local dishes - Amok and LokLak. Amok is a Cambodian dish prepared with five spices in a paste and with fish. LokLak has beef mixed with a darker rich gravy-esque sauce with lettuce. Both were delicious! We were happy to be stepping away from regular foods and into the Cambodian foods. Tomorrow will be our last day in Cambodia before we fly back to Bangkok and into Myanmar in two days time! Some side notes: Today was a tricky one for many of us. Like many cities, or tourist areas, in the poorer countries, begging and aggressive selling were rampant. Many children would run up alongside tourists and beg for "one dollar, for me to go to school" or "one dollar, for me to eat", ranging from two years old and upwards. It was painful not to just provide money to everyone we passed. Additionally, shop keepers were impressively aggressive, which I was not prepared for. They would shove items into your hands, tap or grab your arm to get you into a shop, follow you, etc. Rat explained to us about the situations in his village, which is in the rural parts of Cambodia. He spoke about the political turmoil that was continued through the lack of education of citizens. He spoke about having to find a way himself to get to a secondary school because otherwise he would have to quit going to school. He spoke about the health care and corrupt doctors and staff that required money and bribing to get operations completed. All in all it had a two-fold effect: 1) you realize the silly little things you worry about are pretty much inconsequential when faced with other issues such as hunger, lack of health care, etc. and 2) we were able to see more of "True Cambodia" - we drove through the jungles to see small village markets, rural homes, the large political houses. Rat has been excellent about making sure we are together and safe as well as learning as much about the history and culture as possible. Greetings from Cambodia! I am happy to let you know that we all made it to Cambodia safe and sound :) We took a delightfully short flight (~40 minutes) from Bangkok to the city of Siem Reap! The airline definitely put USA ones to shame; we had a full meal and beverage service on our flight! We were met at the airport outside of customs by our new tour guide for Cambodia - Rat. Rat joked that his shortened name was important in Cambodia because rats are a food here as well as a zodiac sign. We loaded our luggage into a van then got into a separate van for the short ride from the airport to our hotel. On the way Rat gave us a basic overview of what we will be seeing while here, about himself, and a short story that was requested I share with all of you (apologies in advance!). Rat explained to us that we were not allowed to wear "Bow Wow" clothes. After noticing we were unsure what he was talking about, he proceeded to explain. "Bow Wow" clothes are when women wear short shorts and low hanging blouses and when they bend their bodies over to bow the men exclaim, "WOW!". Now you know... We had a quick lunch and rest period at the hotel before going out to our main location. We went to the site of Angkor Wat (translated "City of prayer"), a stunning 900 year old example of Khmer architecture. This location is the largest religious institute in the world along with the longest carved picture in the world. Many of the carvings represented mythical battle stories and stories of atonement. Atonement seems to be a big piece of southeast Asian culture; most believe that you must go to hell to atone for your sins before ascending to heaven (or being reincarnated, reborn, etc.). We caught it in the late afternoon during a huge rainstorm, which only heightened the beauty of the area. It took some time, but we climbed all the way to the third level to see breathtaking scenes of the surrounding areas! Fortunately they changed and added wooden stairs and handrails over what is definitely scary-looking original steps of stone. After watching the sun set, we hopped back into our tiny van and drove to the hotel for rest and dinner. Cambodia food is primarily fish, since there is an abundance of fish in their large lake. It is approximately 65% of their protein needed within their diet. We are being very careful with our food and water consumption, and so far everyone is doing just fine! Tomorrow we will continue our site seeing around Siem Reap and check out what other wonders this country has to offer! Despite being significantly hotter than Thailand, it has been nice to take a break from the busy streets and sounds and activities of Thialand. This morning a few of our travelers went out to partake in Alms for the monks. What happens is the monks rely on the people to provide them with food, and we were fortunate enough to be at a hotel where this process took place. The monk, and a man to row the boat, floated up to the dock where the people were waiting. There were 5 selections of food to provide, so many people could participate. The lay person came to the monk in the boat to give the food - the catch being that there can be no physical contact at all. The person giving the food selected a food item off of a tray (one of the five) and carefully placed the food into the monk's bowl until all of the food from the plate was done. From there, the monk took the food from the pot and collected it all. This happened five times until the food giving had been completed.
For the rest of us, we slept in a little and grabbed breakfast. We all met up to leave on our bus to drive to the Chiang Mai Airport. It was there that we hopped onto a big plane that transported us from Chiang Mai back to Bangkok. Fun Fact: It took about 10 hours for the bus to make it from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, whereas our flight was roughly 55 minutes in duration. We returned to our first hotel we stayed in at Bangkok - it was nice feeling more familiar with an area this time around. We had the rest of the afternoon for the first time this whole trip so we all took full advantage of it. Some Skyped/FaceTimed loved ones, some got massages, some went shopping, some visited local sites, some went swimming, etc. We finished up our evening with a seafood meal at the hotel before a semi-early night. It is important to be rested because tomorrow we will all be hopping on the next plane to see Cambodia! (WARNING: I am not sure how good the Internet will be in Cambodia - it has been off and on spotty here in Thailand. We will keep in contact as best as we can though!) Our day began with a trip to Wat Phra That, or Chiang Mai's Golden Temple on a hill. The story goes that the people wanted to find grounds to build a temple, so they led a white elephant out into the land. The elephant walked and walked and walked...for months. Finally, the white elephant climbed on top of a hill, circled the ground three times, and laid down to die. This marked the location where this temple would be built. Although we only had a limited amount of time, we were able to take a cable car up to the temple, walk around, and see the emerald Buddha (made of dark jade). Additionally, we went into part of the temple and were blessed by a monk - this was done by us kneeling before the monk and him showering us (surprisingly hard) with water while blessing us in Thai and then again in English. One of the biggest delights of this area was seeing these gorgeous old bells. From our perspective, the English read "push the bells", which is what we did after following many other tourists who did the same. Little too late someone realized that the sign actually read "Don't push the bells" but the "don't" was completed covered by little bells!! Fortunately it was okay to just ring the bells and awful faux pas was quickly forgiven. The rest of the day was spent looking at the crafts and economy of Thailand. We started at the jade factory. It was interesting to go in the back of the shop to look at the chunks of jade before they are crafted and polished. I was surprised to find that jade actually comes in a myriad of colors, including my new favorite - lilac. When the buyers go to pick up jade chunks to craft, they look at a "window" inside the jade. What this means is the people selling the large hunks of un-polished jade carve one small strip out so the buyers can analyze what they think the rest of the jade will look like. Unfortunately, sometimes the pieces they buy look good but once they break into it, the insides are worth nothing and they cannot use it for jewelry pieces. We grabbed a quick buffet lunch before stopping at the largest jewelry store in all of Thailand. We were given a very short backstage tour before we were shuffled into the showroom. The jewelry was again, very beautiful. You could see pieces that ranged from $20 to $20,000 or more with diamonds, gold, sapphires, rubies, jade, ivory, etc. Our last big stop for the day was to a silk factory. During the tour we could watch the women weaving the silk, ranging from one color to intense and intricate patterns with several colors. The loom that the women used was controlled by foot pedals as the women moved sets of silk string by hand and with wooden paddles. We had about an hour and a half to clean up and get ready before we set out for a very special dinner. Due to the major construction and traffic, it took much longer than expected, but we received a warm welcome from our hostess. This dinner was special because we were invited into the garden patio of a woman's house. She prepared all of our foods herself! The food ranged from tofu to spicy curry to wontons to fresh fruit. Fun Fact: When Thai persons tell you that something is definitely not spicy, do not take their word for it! I learned this as I took a lovely bite of curry to find out that the spices in it alone could nearly make me breathe real fire out of my mouth.... (Good flavor though!). Our hostess allowed us time after dinner to observe her gardens, which were covered in stunning pottery artwork. We were even allowed to go into a section where the pottery was created! With the cool night air and silver moonlight, it was definitely a sight to see :) Today was one of the VERY best days on our trip so far!
We began bright and early after breakfast by taking a trip over to the Elephant Camp. I wasn't sure quite what to expect, but it was good to see that the elephants were healthy and their trainers were good with - and to - them. We loaded up onto elephants - two people at a time plus the trainer/driver - and were off to traverse through the jungle as well as the river. It was only slightly alarming to feel like we were going to fall off whenever we went up or down a hill :) D (somewhat) joked that the best place to be in life was the first elephant. You can imagine how literally true that might be. After riding the elephants, we jumped onto bamboo rafts to go down the river. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning to do so, and it was so peaceful and serene just floating by spectacular nature. It may have just been our boat, or we had elephants on the mind, but a lot of the shrubbery seemed to take on the shape of elephants near by. We had one section of the river where it was baby "white water", which would have been fine had the water not decided to join our unsuspecting feet on the boat! Following the boat ride we went back to the beginning of our day to watch the cleaning of the elephants before a brief show. During the elephant show, the elephants moved logs and stacked them, helped the trainers up and down them, and the finale had an elephant painting a picture! I could barely believe my eyes, but there was a little elephant just painting away on the canvas... needless to say he actually was a better artist than me! Wrapping up our elephant adventures, we piled into the bus to drive to the Orchid Farm. There we partook in the buffet style lunch (this is seemingly common here) which afforded us the opportunity to try new and exciting foods. We had enough time afterwards to check out the orchids growing on the property, meander through a beautiful butterfly garden, and pick up a few gifts for friends and family back home. Our last afternoon stop was to hop into small trucks to drive into the hills to visit a village. The particular village that we visited had a very distinct look to them because of their golden rings. Women, usually beginning at around age 5(!), all wore thick gold bands around their neck, elongating it. We were able to try on half a set of rings to see what it might be like, and it was extremely heavy! We were not sure we would be able to wear them all the time. It was interesting to see photographs of when the women removed the bands to put on a new set - there was bruising where the rings sat on the body. Everyone there was sweet and smiling, and we got to meet a few children even. These children had American names because they used Christian names. We were given free time on our own before dinner which people used to do various things, such as sleep, relax, swim, get massages, etc. At 7:00pm, we left for the Chian Mai Cultural Center. It was here that we were able to participate in a dinner and show. The dinner was a collection of small bowls, each containing different foods from spicy curies to sweet crispy noodles that tasted somewhat like Rice Krispy Treats. Partway through the dinner, traditional Thai dancers came out and participated in several dances for us to watch. One of the dances they showed us before grabbing people in the crowd to join them! One of our very own got to particpate, which was quite a treat. Finally, after dinner we were able to split two ways - some of us to the hotel to sleep, some of us to the night market to see what was available. I can speak for those who went to the market that it was quite intriguing - many of the shops had very similar products (scarves, wooden carved elephants, bags, incense, etc) but it was fun to mill about and listen to the live music, smell the foods, watch the hords of tourists bartering for products from the locals. Tomorrow marks the halfway point of our trip already - I can hardly believe it! |
AuthorTeacher by year, traveler by summer. ArchivesCategories |